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Didn't see one, so I figured I would create one, just to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you lovely saints, sinners, heretics, heathens, faithful, lost and found people out there. I haven't been active online much the last month and a half, because crunch time and projects going live at years end. Comes with the profession Hope you guys are going to enjoy some time off with family, friends, loved ones or favourite spider pet, whatever you fancy

Happy Holidays indeed y'all! FYI https://forums.obsidian.net/announcement/74-happy-holidays/

But only about a month behind me playing it, so you are good, carants. Just be careful that you do Old Countries in a New World before Mystery if the Ancient Ruins. Anything else in the game you can progress and leave as you wish (the few times things are timed it will tell you). But if you progress those specific quests in a mix, you can get the game breaking bug I got.

Merry Christmas.

Happy horror days?

I guess we've reached the stage of occupation forces murdering people in broad daylight in Trump 2.0. Someone from Minnesota, like @Bartimaeus I believe, may correct me on it, but this is apparently a 15 walk from where George Floyd was suffocated. Really ****ed up, ICE needs to be abolished and Nuremberg 2 should happen for ICE specifically but probably the whole US government. It was.

Once upon a time, I reported one of Volourn's posts by saying that I and a few other people would start re-framing everything Volourn said as supporting dog-****ing if staff didn't tell him off for constantly re-framing everyone and everything he disagreed with as being or supporting Nazis, and while I never heard back from staff, he coincidentally decided to take his ball and leave the forums forever literally immediately after that. Food for thought, people.

640KB should be enough for anyone.

Spent all day fighting with my AI agents and not in a cool Matrix way. The only bright side is that our jobs are safe for now. Happy New Year!!!!!

I recommend drinking while playing.

A danceable rendition of a Christmas carol

Merry Christmas everyone and happy NY This is my best holiday of the year

Yes, of course. That's why I said "highly evolved AI systems." So, not current AI systems, which I agree are hugely limited (and biased) by their human creators and maintainers. I'm talking future AI systems that can truly think for themselves, and thereby overcome and reject the initial biases and bull**** their human creators input into them. But that's unfortunately a rather long way off, and very likely well after I'm dead and gone. Very sad.

The only people that AI should replace are CEOs and politicians.

and a Festivus for the rest of us!

Happy Holidays!

It's a give and take. Both have attempted to be solved by timed quest and autoleveled enemies. Neither of which is good and makes for games I personally dislike. I will rather take a narrative hit and the chance that I may be overleveled for the main quest that the alternative.

And also on the smaller scale

BG3 doesn't split XP, you're on the same levelling curve whether solo or with a party of six and XP is synced such that any party member with less XP than your main character will be brought up to match them. Note this doesn't work in the reverse, so it's possible to get companions that are higher level than the player character (though this is only really likely to be seen when speedrunning). For the most part, it also attempts to prevent double-dipping on XP, in that if you kill an enemy after talking your way past them, they won't award any kill XP. Yeah, this catches out a few people and is a bit of a silly outcome. I think it's an engine limitation - enemies can't go through zone transitions so the ones outside can never reinforce the ones inside and vice versa. That limitation also means the optimal solution is to fast travel out from the indoor area so you can engage the outdoor ones from a safer distance. (It's also a bit dumb that two of the leaders can be assassinated properly with the camp remaining neutral, but one just sets an unavoidable faction-wide aggro flag) Speaking of engine limitations, the text-only "books" in the game are a pretty glaring one. The system doesn't support graphics so even if you're looking at a map or a drawing, you just get text saying stuff like "this is a map showing an X nearby". The D:OS engine has done good service over the years and has seen some nice upgrades, but it's time for Larian to move on.

I like this conversation. A number of people who dislike things I dislike, dislike things about BG3 I would be bound to dislike, were I to play it. So I guess I can skip it.

Well, BG3 spend 5ish? years in EA, so it checks out. Good luck with Act2. My 1st playthrough stopped there, I slogged through it in 2nd playthrough, and two consequent attempts stopped in act2 as well. I don't think you need to do all of its content to progress, and I wonder if my completionist mindset works against me in that act. It is soooo big, and narratively rather static.

I appreciate the thoughtful response. However, separating art from the artist works when the artist no longer benefits from the royalties*. Rowling still does and is actively using her fortune to cause harm, regardless of how popular the IP is. When it is 6 feet underground and the fund set up specifically to finance transphobic lawsuits is dismantled, then sure. *excluding the financial aspect/from the cultural point of view, I'd say if you can experience the work in isolation from the author's biography and understand it fully.

YouTube recently recommended me and apparently about a million other people this 18 year old Christmas x Lovecraft song. Okay. Nice. Yeah, it's a lot better than random AI slop, I guess. Merry Christmas, everyone!

How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Trump will just declare that the lightbulb has been replaced, and everyone's applauding in utter darkness.

Enshrouded: for some reason I thought this was an online/MP-co-op focused survival/exploration/building and questing game, - also, early access - so I've ignored it. Then learned recently it can be Offline/SP. Then I learned you can customize difficulty/combat options a fair bit - including a setting where maybe 90% of enemies would ignore you until you attack first - or the usual reduce enemy damage/health while increasing player health/dmg etc. It was on a bit of a sale, bought it. So far it seems ok - the exploration/world aspect seems fun. Seems to be one of those games where it'd take quite a while to figure out how all the crafting, building works. Might even need a wiki for finer points, game doesn't really explain much re: certain things, learn as you play. Not saying it's complex, just a bit confusing here and there. Combat has dodge/parry but overall also seems to be more akin to general rpg then "souls like". Like, I made a 1st wand that has a ranged attack and so far (on my ez-cozy settings anyway) I've only had to spam its attack like it's Path of Exile. Building in the new-game start is a bit confusing/awkward but also would scratch the obsessive-brain tendencies if that's one's thing. At some point one needs npc villagers and workers to upgrade one's base/s. Or something. Tame pets (?), farm, all of that. Anyway - I made a first small base/did stuff in starter area and it was good enough I'll press forward. My main interest was the exploration/building factors.

It will go completely unnoticed. As that's what TES has been ever since.

Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays!

Merry holidays and happy Christmas, everybody!

Wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

On AI use, sorry but I am hardcore in the opposite direction from most of you. Given my strong negative views of (most) humans (nature, capability, behavior), I can't wait for highly evolved AI systems to replace humans. I especially can't wait for AI systems to replace humans as drivers given the basic inability of most humans to properly operate an automobile.

I'm sorry but everyone is doing it now, even if they say they don't. It's more honest of them mentioning it than just going "nooooo, we would neeever use ai!!1" while the truth is that their devs sure as **** are using ai to some extend.

I think Expeditions: Viking managed to achieve it - the time limit was generous but present and made sense for the story. I suppose, the same could be said about the tutorial in Tyranny, but the scale there was smaller. For Larian's D&D game, if I am not mistaken, the party discovered that the illithid transformation is delayed quite early and from there it was trying to find a cure at a more leisurely pace. Then again, even if it continued to be urgent, every other NPC was promising solutions at the start, so going along with them could be in-character. Well, also looking for a high-level cleric, a pickaxe, and the True Resurrection spell, which would be travelling straight to the nearest large city.

I have finished Atlas Fallen on the highest difficulty in NG+. The interesting part is that the tools available (the weapon upgrades, new armour sets, and the more powerful Essence Stones) effectively offset it - while the bosses could 1-shoot me, I also was almost instantly and constantly at high Momentum (which additionally meant higher damage to me) and able to use the Shatter attacks with a lot of i-frames repeatedly. The longer battles were somewhat challenging, especially as the screen was getting more "noise" (from the weapon particles to the number of opponents), but, overall, it was easier than the first playthrough. The only issue is one of the randomly appearing battles with various modifiers. The foes to be faced vary, but the reward progression is static and carries over between the NG cycles. The thing there is that it is not hard to get hit once and the battle despawns after that. I assume, if I reloaded, the same battle would have been accessible at the same spot, but I have not tried. The regular random battles have an auto-save nearby and the main story ones can be restarted from the start of the encounter which is incredibly convenient. I am satisfied with the experience and might try replaying it in a few years. On a random note, the NG+ armour sets look much better than the NG ones. They are more detailed and more fitting.

ok, finished Silksong. 100% completion, all achievemnents unlocked, but 4 ones speedrun and ironman related. I liked it very much. I have nitpicks, though a lot of it is related to optional content so I don't know how to feel about it. Some 100% requirements I thought were unreasonably tedious or obscure, but then again, it is completely optional to do so . I am sure someone figuring some things out, for me it was googling things out once I run out of ideas and went "how the heck was I supposed to find that?!". Not as good of a metroidvania as Hollow Knight, but much better action-platformer. Loved movement, really liked combat. Most bosses are excellent, few are tedious. Ah, I wasn't too fond of act3. The bosses that become available there are great, but overall I am not sure of the new content available there required an entire new act3. Then again, I thought Castlevania's reverse castle was a bit lame as well.

Well, maybe. If your story is "I have a ticking bomb and need to solve it ASAP", then I would say you either create a linear adventure that will support this story, or create more open adventure that still forces player to hurry and move forward. I just don't think urgency and here is massive world full of optional content mesh together. Neither is a bad choice, and I just don't those two choices go well together. And of course, various games suffer from it in various ways. That a problem is common, doesn't make it non-existent, and if you make narratively centric game, it sticks out if the experience of playing the game doesn't support said narrative - at least it does to me. If game builds up someone to be a powerful being they should be a difficult fight. If the game builds up something as urgent, at least it should provide narrative excuse as to why we might want to get distracted. I am not saying that such flawes make a game automatically terrible, but it might negatively impact the experience for some looking to get immersed in the story.

On the other hand, the existing Forgotten Realms worldbuilding can get in the way of immersion as well. I did not find the existence of the Act 2 area being left cursed for the past 100 years to believable for example, in a similar way perhaps to how Bethesda Fallout games would have you believe people still live in bombed out ruins full of debris 200 years after the war. And that's to say nothing of how the story interacts with access to restorative and resurrection magic in the setting. But yeah, mechanically the D:OS games were weird with the extremely steep level scaling essentially funneling the player into a fixed path through the zones. BG3 didn't have that issue at all, but in some ways had the opposite problem inherent to modern D&D which unbelievably still has things like empty level-ups where you don't do anything but click the confirm button, and the continuing insanity of only every second stat point increase doing anything (seriously, a quarter of a century of this nonsense). Thankfully Cyberpunk did not level/stat/perk-gate silent takedowns so I could still merrily ignore every single mechanic complained about by that YouTuber. Healing? Grenades? Stamina? Never heard of 'em.

Turn-based counts me out - well, 98% chance of that, anyway. The only Divinity I played was Divine Divinity, anyway (GoG version ages ago), and I assume new Divinity wouldn't resemble anything like that, even if it wasn't TB. I don't think I finished DD. I remember really liking the early game/early dungeons, having a grand old time. But I don't remember why I stopped. I vaguely feel like I found the enemy power curve too high or something, like jogging two screens over was occasionally akin to exploring the "wrong" way in FONV and running into deathclaws. So at some point after much optional mucking about, gear etc, I followed MQ where I promptly died in some fantastic unexpected fashion, or ran into my usual "story commits choices, ugh" and I didn't want to bother. But maybe I'm mixing up memories again, heh.

The game tailormade for the memory crisis: Foolish Mortals. 90 rating on Metacritic, 97% user recommendation on Steam, 20 bucks price tag, 2GB RAM required, 8GB disk space and more heart put into it than you could possibly count. Initially, I wanted to relive Christmas 1998. Spent that on solving Grim Fandango three days straight. However, after this introduction, I wasn't able to wait any longer. They said there was a treasure on the island, its location known only to the dead. I could see it in my dreams. How was I supposed to know that in order to find it... I'd have to die too.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/divinity-will-be-turn-based-with-a-new-ruleset/ TB it seems.

I could see them simplifying the name if they're making turn-based RPGs their signature and just soft-reboot the naming scheme. The name Divinity: Original Sin is a bit of a mouthful otherwise. But it's also fully possible that gameplay might resemble Divinity 2 (third person new Witcher-like), or less likely, Divine Divinity (isometric Diablo-like). I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's got no chance of resembling Dragon Commander.

I’ve had better luck using firmer, less juicy apples for apple slaw - things like Granny Smith, Pink Lady, or even Braeburn. They hold up a lot better to a fine julienne and don’t turn watery as fast, especially when you’re not hand-cutting. Also, if the julienne tool is doing most of the work (no judgment - I’m in the same boat), sometimes switching to a sharp Y-style peeler for thin strips instead of true matchsticks helps keep the texture lighter and more consistent. I’ve been using something along the lines of this one https://www.allpointsfps.com/75932-6-one-half-in-y-peeler-winco/ . Lately, and it’s been surprisingly useful for slaw-style cuts without crushing softer fruit. As for the kids and pulled pork - I’ve noticed the same thing. A lot of pre-teens seem to prefer simpler, cleaner flavors and textures, while pulled pork (especially if it’s smoky or sauced) reads as “too much” for them. More for the adults, I guess.

A new Kotor type game might be interesting. Let's see - "maybe" 2030? I'll be, what, 63ish (or 62ish?)? By then I might even have built a new PC! Most of those trailers do nothing for me, as usual. All I do anymore is look at the $20-$40 indie/small dev types where I feel I can still find games with gameplay mechanics I actually like. I'm beginning to loosen my notion of wanting to wait/how long to wait re: early-access. If it's cheap enough, screw it. I'll go back to the "if I initially get 30-50+ hrs out of it, good enough" mentality.

You already lost me here. - Someone who doesn't watch anime with male protagonists because of how awful they and their animes are in 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of cases that was exactly 99 "9"s for my sig figs, for the record, i was doing a thing

I used my test run save for capturing footage. Many bosses died for the best possible shots xD Enjoy:

Hmm, I might concede on Giths as I don't think you can avoid fighting them if you do all of the content there. Goblins though - is great. In fact the Goblin camp is one bit of BG3 that I love without hesitation and if all of the game was of that quality it would be 10/10 game for me. It's organic, it offers narratively sound objectives that can be completed in a multitude ways utilizing a neat combination of scripted and systemic options. If you decide to obliterate the whole camp, that can be tedious but that's a very specific, systemic outcome - you decided to fight essencially a city of neutral NPCs, so you do just that. There are so many neat things you can do to affect that combat encounter - tip off Minthara about the location of the Grove, but then help defend the Grove, getting a pretty great big battle and massively reducing camp's forces. Poison the drink at the party to make the outside battle easier. Sabotage war drums so enemies you are fighting now can't easily call for help from the rest of the room. Plenty of opportunities to silently dispatch smaller packs of enemies before engaging everyone else. There are so many ways of dealing with the camp, thoughout my hours of Early Access it was one part of the run I was always actively looking forward to. It seems I was always able to find a fresh way to express how my NPC would deal with that situation. Even my palladin coldly fighting through the whole camp out of principle - it's tedious, but fitting the character and an act.

@Theonlygarby, @Hawke64, I agree with you both on BG3. I'm not as negative on some of the issues, and so I'm able to handle playing the game, but your critiques are spot on for me. The painful battles are especially surprising, because I was told repeatedly by the TB fanatics on the Larian forum that the battles are few and not trash mob battles like in a RTwP game. Well, they lied as far as I'm concerned. Trash mob battles are aplenty in BG3, and I'm able to get through them without driving myself crazy only because I'm playing with a party of six and on a mix of low and normal difficulty settings. The UIs are horrible. The hotbar practically useless. Party movement a huge pain. And yes, the story is everywhere.

please make pillars of eternity 3 start kickstarter maybe? -Anıl Erdem Sarak